Rating: 
Summary: Gorgeous Book
Review: I liked Jhumpa Lahiri's first book (Interpreter of Maladies) but wasn't a die hard fan. After 'The Namesake', I'll have to read everything she writes.A fair number of writers base their work on the Indian diaspora, and the developmental confusion that results from the clash of two very different cultures. What sets Lahiri apart is her work's universal appeal. I do believe that having a background similar to the book's central character makes it much more absorbing, but any person who has immigrated to this country and struggled with two cultures will find this book engrossing. Even if you discard the immigrant subtext, Lahiri is a masterful storyteller and spins a fabulous yarn. Just for that, this is a book worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Living up to its namesake
Review: Jhumpa Lahiri's latest diatribe, as faithfully translated from the Sanskrit, reflects an immature, unstudied, and inexcusably cynical view of the immigrant experience in North America. Not only are the characters shallow, boring, and fanatical, but much like Justin Timberlake, Jhumpa "J-Lo" Lahiri "Justifies" that shallowness by glorifying their relatively moronic choices, elevating their loopy, bumbling existence to Christlike status. For example, the Ganguli family members protest when they are accurately accused of being from Bangladesh, insisting that they are Pakistani with an accent that betrays their true heritage. The hapless Gangulis seemingly delight in burning their hopelessly drug-addicted daughter to a fried Twinkie crisp when they decide on a whim that she is not worth the dowry commanded of them. They then use her corpse as the base for a paper-mache sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva (by adding a few limbs), which they have the audacity to sell to another Bengali family at a local flea market for a few rupees. Lahiri's Dalai-Lama-like attempt to lampoon suburbia in favor of traditional South Asian values falls short, however, when the Gangulis begin broadcasting their own state of the art infomercials on a public access cable station, enticing viewers with promises of instant fame and fortune by owning a 7-Eleven, selling baubles at the local mall, opening a sweatshop, or flushing raw sewage into the Ganges river. Perhaps Miss Lahiri would care to actually set foot on American soil rather than speculate on what it is like to live in one of its suburbs. Perhaps, too, she would care to examine her actual ethnic roots rather than fabricate them as she wish they might be. And perhaps if she spent a little less time trying to adjust her tiara and a little more time practicing her penmanship, she might actually compose something of minimal competence. After all, fiction, like sovereign nations, has defensible boundaries; this book is boundlessly indefensible. Bravo, and thanks for a terrific read! I can't wait for the sequel!
Rating:
Summary: Lovely and Simple
Review: Ever since reading "Interpreter of Maladies," I have been waiting to hear from Jhumpa Lahiri again. This book did not disappoint. The story is simple. An Indian couple, new to America, have two children, Gogol and Sonia. Gogol gets his name from a Russian writer, and the unusual moniker is a perpetual embarrassment to him. Not realizing the personal meaning behind his namesake, he changes his name to Nikhil when he enters college. But the name does not completely leave him, as he realizes throughout the novel. "The Namesake" is a story of an Indian-American and the identity and family conflicts that accompany that heritage. Lahiri is one of the most elegant writers working today. Her prose is remarkably simple and clear, yet manages to convey meanings and emotions with startling impact. Her descriptions of Gogol and his father walking on Cape Cod and of Gogol and his wife eating their first anniversary dinner are some of the best scenes in this book, tersely delivered but at the same time deeply touching. Lahiri's descriptions ("He feels a pleasant ache at his temples, and a sudden gratitude for the day and where it has brought him") are remarkably insightful, and capable of twisting a reader's heart. This is one of the few novels I have read (not for school) that I found myself highlighting passages and repeating sentences in my head throughout the day. I hope I don't have to wait another 4 years for Lahiri's next novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Not impressed
Review: I absolutely loved "Interpreter of Maladies" and was anxiously waiting to read Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel. So I excitedly purchased the book and started reading it. It took me a week to finish the book and that was only because I was pushing myself to complete it. There was nothing about the book that drew me in, even though the material itself is something I could relate to being a first-generation Asian. Maybe it was her third-person type of narration that made it difficult for me to bond with the book.
It's not a book that I would recommend to someone else unless they were wanting to know more about the Indian culture, or acculturation in general from a different country.
Rating: 
Summary: The Namesake
Review: This is an extremely evocative novel, deft in its exploration of a specific immigrant community, the middle-class Bengali American. While Lahiri describes the quotidian realities of the lives of her characters with amazing nuance -- what they eat (endless menus), what they wear etc. -- I thought the novel was less than satisfying in its portrayal of the central character, Gogol. Perhaps she wanted Gogol to be something of a dweeb. When I finished reading the novel, I asked myself what was interesting about him, apart from his peculiar name. Well, he defies parental/community expectations and becomes an architect instead of a doctor or an engineer. He rarely says anything that's particularly insightful or witty. Apart from the women he sleeps with (Maxine and the Moushumi), he appears to have no friends. In fact, I found the novel most wanting in this respect. We're asked (implicitly) to accept Gogol as a fully realized person, but it appears that he has lived for thirty some years and never managed to have a close friend. If we are to believe that he is attractive enough (physically and intellectually) for people like Maxine and Moushumi (both urban intellectuals with extensive friend circles) to fall for him, then it follows that Gogol himself must have some charisma. But as the finished the novel, I couldn't think of any episodes that reveal to us a compelling or charismatic personality. As I said -- a dweeb.
Rating:
Summary: Lacks direction
Review: The novel seemed to lack any momentum. Jhumpa Lahiri uses carefully sparse prose and is often very insightful, however, events in the story are predictable, which is unfortunate when she leads up to it over a course of many pages. Aside from the Ganguli family, of which only the mother and son (Gogol, supposedly the protagonist) are fully realized, the rest of the characters are by varying degrees heavily clichéd.
The Realism of the storytelling, with its emphasis on details, many of which work well by setting the time and the cultural milieu that the characters inhabit, slows the story down tremendously.
The writing-tone lacks urgency. And while this fact may delight people who praise Jhumpa Lahiri's writer-ly patience, I found that the only thing keeping me reading, really, was that I myself am a son of immigrants and very much in Gogal's shoes. Thinking about the novel now, though, I'm struck by how much it leaves out of "my" experience (and I mean that in the least picky way possible). For that reason I feel that non-immigrants won't fully sympathize with Gogol's alienation, while at the same time, immigrants may feel that there is so much that was left unsaid.
This novel was like a dressed up short story, but I think once Jhumpa Lahiri gets to her second novel her skills will be such that she'll produce some beautiful work.
Rating:
Summary: Ms Lahiri proves that she is a great novelist too...
Review: After reading the Interpreter of Maladies, I have been waiting for the next collection of Jhumpa Lahiri short stories for 3 years. However, The Namesake proves that Ms Lahiri is equally accomplished in the Art of the Novel. Gogol Ganguli lives in every middle-class suburban immigrant home in America. His greatest accomplishments in life also reflect the tragedy of being exposed to an environment which makes him resent his own parents. This book will make second generation Americans realize that it is ok to be different - being able to make the perfect samosa can be as challenging as selecting the perfect merlot. Warning for readers from Kolkata (now living in America) - this book will make you want to take the next flight home !
Rating:
Summary: Below par
Review: I enjoyed Lahiri's first book, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, especially the first, last and title stories. I ordered THE NAMESAKE from Amazon.com even before the pub date, because I couldn't wait. So of course my expectations were sky-high for her newest book, but nevertheless, they didn't have to be dashed quite so cruelly. THE NAMESAKE is unbelievably dull, dull, dull. I can't finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting and poignant - I couldn't put it down
Review: Stunning in its simplicity, this book continues to haunt me days after I finished reading it. As a first generation Indian who came to the U.S. only a few years ago, I find myself able to identify with both Gogol Ganguli, the protagonist of the book, and his parents, because I moved to the States in my early twenties but have embraced a lot of American customs and values as my own. And yet, I will never completely be American, neither will I be the Indian I was back home. Jhumpa Lahiri captures the essence of this dual identity so well. I amazed by the details in her novel that let us live a lifetime alongside the Ganguli family as they each grapple with learning to belong.
Rating:
Summary: This enthralling and richly readable novel is one to savor
Review: Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, THE NAMESAKE, begins with a recipe. In her small apartment kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ashima Ganguli is mixing together Rice Krispies, peanuts, diced onion, salt, lemon juice and chili peppers in "a humble approximation" of a snack she used to buy in Calcutta. For Ashima, who is newly married and nine months pregnant, who misses her family and feels thoroughly alone in New England in the late 1960s, everything in America is "a humble approximation" of her life in India, which she left behind when she married Ashoke, an engineering student at MIT. For Lahiri, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her debut short story collection INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, this revelatory detail is typical: refined, effortless and graceful, it seems obvious only because it's so profound. The rest of the novel follows this tack, locating small truths and ironies in mundane, often overlooked objects like food and, as the title suggests, names. While mixing her snack, Ashima goes into labor and the next day her first child is born --- it's a boy. Such a joyous occasion for Ashima and Ashoke is nonetheless complicated by the choice of names. Bengalis, Lahiri explains, have not one but two names --- a pet name used by family and friends, and a good name by which he or she is known to the world. "Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated," she says. "Good names tend to represent dignified and enlightened qualities" and appear on diplomas, awards and certificates. Following Bengali custom, the choice of names is left to Ashima's aging grandmother, who posts a letter containing one name for a girl and another for a boy. But the letter never arrives and grasping for choices Ashoke chooses Gogol, a name with much greater significance than merely that of his favorite writer. Lahiri introduces the Gangulis in such a way that it feels impossible not to be enticed into their world and demand to know their journeys, hardships and fates. After confidently setting these characters in motion, she traces their lives and the repercussions of Gogol's name through three decades, knowingly evoking the compromises and sacrifices they make to adjust to life in America. Throughout the novel, her prose is consistently somber and refined, subtle and subdued, but always pointed and revealing. Likewise the novel's pace arcs gracefully, a model of writerly patience. But what makes THE NAMESAKE so enthralling and so richly readable is the care with which Lahiri recreates the ever-changing America where the Gangulis live. She populates her scenes and descriptions with a multitude of well-observed specifics --- at times far more details than necessary for verisimilitude, but never once threatening to overwhelm the story. More crucially, Lahiri writes about Indian and American cultures with the same generosity of detail. She evokes the suburbia of Gogol's adolescence through his beloved Beatles albums and the Olan Mills school pictures as confidently as she describes his adulthood in New York through Ikea furniture and Dean & DeLuca gift baskets. Her descriptions of Ashima's painstaking preparations of mincemeat croquettes are as assured as her descriptions of spaghetti alla vongole at a dinner party. Such a range of details may not seem overly significant, but Lahiri uses these differences in cultures and cuisines to keep the reader aware of the growing rift between these two worlds, of how far Gogol has moved from his origins and of how strongly those Bengali ties hold him in ways that he only gradually begins to realize. Ultimately, there is something culinary about THE NAMESAKE, something complex, refined and robust in its blends of ingredients, something substantial and nourishing in its interplay of ideas and characters. This is a novel to savor, whose taste will linger in the reader's mind long after the last course is eaten, the dishes washed and put away, and the book placed aside on the shelf. --- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner from Bookreporter.com
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